Feelin' Lucky

I'm staying on my regimen, and trying to stay accountable here. Little lapse yesterday - I bought a bottle of wine and had 2 glasses as I polished and posted my latest chapter/article last night. Cost me half a pound. But I waited until the proofreading was done.

I am a lucky man. Lucky in my children, lucky in my friends, lucky in the people who love me, lucky in my talents, and lucky in my opportunities. In order to discover all this luck I had to learn where I am not lucky, will never be lucky, but that's another story. I have had bumps in my road, but I am lucky as well in my relentless energy and hopefulness, which happy confluence has driven me through, around, or over many a bump.

This morning I sit at Starbucks writing these words, a little before 8. Pretty people keep bustling in to get their morning jolt. Off with their coats, sit down, spread out, take a sip. Three minutes later they are jumping up again, checking their watches, on with their coats again, off to the workaday world! I hate that for them.

So one more thing in which I am lucky: I can sit at Starbucks, get a little work done, read for a spell, plan my day, and enjoy the whole damn cup.

* * *

A sign of the times, the other day.

The backstory: back in 2002, recognizing an unfilled niche, I wrote a very useful book on how to sell books online. Shakespeare it wasn't, but some people started referring to it as "the bible" within its niche and I know from voluminous personal feedback that it helped a lot of people secure some sort of personal income from their homes, often during the kind of rough patches that so many of us face now and then. It has sold about 15,000 copies, so it became a bit of a home business for me as well, handy iu my own rough patches. It begs to be updated, yet it keeps selling.

Orders come in for it from Amazon and Baker & Taylor each week -- a dozen here, couple of dozen there. I emailed my printer's warehouse yesterday with an order for 41 for two of Amazon's warehouses, which may be a sign of the times in itself.

But the order I pay a little more attention to are the onesies that come directly to me through Amazon Marketplace. I sign these books and ship them individually myself, perhaps 20 or so a month. I notice where they go. Cities, hamlets in the deep South, hardscrabble addresses Down East,out they go to places all over. It's not often a sign of prosperity when someone goes into the used bookselling business. Just another little smoke signal from our transitional times, books into groceries, swords into more swords.

This weekend an order came in from Hollywood. A fellow with "III" after his name, from Century Boulevard in Paramount, California. I don't really know any more about it than that, but of course I imagine the gentleman to be a starving, striking writer: "We can keep the car for another month, honey, but we'll have to start selling off our books."

Of course I know nothing. I do hear a bit about the strike now and then from my friend Steve Peterman, and I occasionally look up Nikki Finke's blog to get an update. From everything I hear about how long this strike may go on, I hope that my new reader in Paramount, CA has a lot of books.

* * *

One thing I have learned, now that I am able to finish my first cup while sitting in a comfy chair at Starbucks: bring your empty cup back up to the counter and they'll give you a refill for 50 cents. Big spender, I leave them the whole buck.

Mine is not a paper cup, by the way. Hell, no.

It is a lovely silver and black Starbucks mug that my son gave me at Christmas. You already know that Danny is 9 (9 1/2 on Thursday!), and you may even be aware that he is an environmentalist. He will brook no further discoveries of paper cups in the Prius when I pick him up after school. I am doing better at this, although it is to my (short-term) benefit that he is required by law to sit in the back seat, out of reach of the glove box. Our little joke is that he is "saving the planet one Daddy at a time."

* * *

I promised myself when I began to write this entry that I would waste no words apologizing for my recent failure to post more regularly. My work goes well. It better, because I am getting daily pre-publication orders for the book. Each week I have been able to send off a digital chapter to my pre-publication "subscribers,: and if I continue to meet that obligation I cannot help but have a book to ship them in time for my self-imposed March 25 deadline. Isn't this how Dickens and Dostoyevsky did it?

There's a little Otis on the Starbucks mix as I finish this. How can he not be today's soundtrack?



And I'm thinking Otis would not mind sharing a little space today....